Work, Work, Work
Yes, it’s a children’s book–but it’s not Ishmael for six-year-olds. As Daniel has said in reply to many queries about this, “The minds of small children don’t need changing. If they grow up in a household of changed minds, then they’ll automatically share their family’s view of the world and humanity’s place in it. If they grow up in a household of unchanged minds, THEN they’ll be ready to meet Ishmael!”
Work, Work, Work is a very special children’s book. It’s not designed for lulling kids to sleep or for passive listening while Mom or Dad reads and rereads the story to them. Each page is an invitation for kids (and parents alike) to participate in discovering and in a real sense creating their own experience of the story as it goes along!
Story summary
Work, Work, Work is the story of an industrious gopher whose lifework is to burrow from dawn to dusk under an enchanted land that he never sees.
While he grumbles about his unceasing labors, the morning sky is spray-painted from a dirigible (and the sun gets a drop of blue in its eye), two UFOs from different planets meet for a strange exchange, an enormous octopus-like creature (who has just come from laying waste to Las Vegas) is subdued by a barrage of hats, hotdogs, and toasters, and, at the close of day, a window opens at the horizon so that a purple giant can hang the moon in the sky. Surfacing in the twilight, the gopher sighs, “Well, at least something happened. I ran into a rock!”
Parents will find that Work, Work, Work, with its colorful and detailed illustrations by Daniel, is something different from the usual. It’s a book that brings readers and read-to together in a highly interactive entertainment, as kids discover and explain all the strange goings-on that take place while the mole snuffles along in oblivion underground.
As Daniel Fleischer, the seven-year-old to whom the book is dedicated, said during a walk in the woods with his father, “If we looked at the ground the whole time we’d be just like the mole in Work, Work, Work who missed all the amazing things in the sky.”
Purchase the book from your local bookstore or Amazon
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